alternative to garden plant pots

Some good & interesting ideas & tips here, thanks.

cheers

 

Pallets!...You can make nearly anything out of them. Compost bins, shed floors, lawn edging, I even made a cricket bat for the kids. There's a joiners shop that cuts them up for kindling near me, I can get loads for next to nothing.

 

Wow pauly you are so lucky, wish i was closer !!!!


Brill ideas everyone keep them coming !

:thku:

 

the normal really.. (sorry, first post, hello ) ie anything decorative ! We've used some of those old antique kettles before , they look great and a bit of a gimmick, but only in the right setting. Chimney pots are great, but beware the winter if you're going to fill them with soil (there's an article here about them ).

Other than that, imagination is pretty much your only limit.

 

Just a quick tip, at your local Co-op food store, they "should" retain the plastic tubs that there cut flowers come in. They are also told to charge you 50p for them, but most of the stores never charge you and you can get them for free. They are roughly the same size as normal plant pots.

 

Loved the car - I'm another one for recycling. I have an old loo planter, wheelbarrow, tin bath and old deep sinks. Also a feature in my garden is an old bike with a basket on the front and plants growing through the wheels.





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Love that bath Alana. I'm looking for one for my husband to make inti a sand bed for his alpines. I haven't a clue where to look!

 

This thread reminded me of a book I bought from a charity shop Pantyhose, Hot Peppers, Tea Bags, and More-for the Garden: 1,001 Ingenious Ways to Use Common Household Items to Control Weeds, Beat ... and Save Time Probably only worth the 50p or so I paid for soome light hearted reading. I'll have to 'dig it out'.

 

Hi All,

I use old freezer trays and pot noodle pots.

 

This year, my biggest 'alternative' has been Asda plastic buckets. Since, unusually, I had about 98% germination of tomato seeds and every family member, friend, neighbour, charity and random person in the street (well, that bit's not true - but you get the point) has had tomato plants, I found Asda buckets (3 for £5) were great value for impromptu containers.

I do wonder though, having bought 12 of them, whether the woman on the check-out is trying to decide whether I'm a particularly clean or a particularly dirty customer!

 

Some ingenious ideas above!

As a child, I was told, 'Necessity is the Mother of Invention'...along with this and growing up watching Blue Peter I have never really been one for buying anything for the garden just for the sake of it. When I was little, I thought everybody's mum used pyrex kitchen casseroles to cover the alpines on the rock garden in very wet weather. Now I realise that other families were using theirs to make warming meals!!
I've used some of the ideas above before, also find fruit nets good stuffed with lavender to clear smaller 'green' ponds when it's been more appropriate than finding barley straw.

Old tyres...bloomin' ugly if used badly, but wonderful for all sorts of structural uses and planters when well camouflaged!

 

I've got various dolly tubs which can be used for plants if they are already leaky so they have drainage. i have several that don't have holes and it's harder to know what to do with those.

Also two old lead cold water tanks, the sort with rivets down the edge. They look satisfactorily weathered and mellow.

I always wanted a row of old toilets, each with flowers spilling out of the bowl.

On the subject of old tyres something like this would be cool. You can probably get them in the UK - at a price.
Friday Photo- A Thailand Rubbish Receptacle | Milt Blog

 

Asda, and many other supermarkets sell the daily flower buckets at 10 for 99p
They are usually hidden under the cut flower stand bound with yellow tape

I picked this up from someone posting down South, up in Scotland they were put in the skip, but taking from the stores skip is theft
So I spoke to the manager, he confirmed by phone with the stores down south
gave me twenty for the information and now they are on sale, but someone bags them all first hour of opening now
(probably a professional seller which will spoil it for everyone :-(

Jack McH

 

I've heard this before from someone (which is how I came to be in Asda), but since I couldn't see any, I sought out an Asda type person who knew nothing about it, the Customer Service desk knew nothing, they asked the Duty Manager who just shook his head and said 'Since we're only a small store we don't carry much in the way of cut flowers - any we do get we just stick in one of our buckets'. Trust me to drive 8 miles to what must be the smallest Asda in the world!!

 

I got some cut flower buckets from Morrisons; 99p for 12, just the job, a few holes popped in the bottom and I've now got pots that are roughly 5lt size I would say